The Directions of the Stars
by Lady Heliotrope
Summary: "I would like a story pre-fall where Sherlock and John sit outside and talk about the stars." LJ Prompt. Oneshot. Preromance. Post-Baskerville.


LJ Prompt: "I would like a story pre-fall where Sherlock and John sit outside and talk about the stars." - thewoman_76 on sherlockbbc's LJ post _Make Me a Monday Week 78_.

There might be more planets than stars here. Oh well. I tried!

Oh, and the joke is an old one, and not mine, but I read somewhere (Arianne Devere's blog? I really forget...) that a good stand-in for any Holmesian influence in the world culture pre-Sherlock would be Auguste Dupin, of Poeian origins, hence the adaptation.

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><p>"If...erm...if we'd known we'd be in this situation, we could have brought a tent," said John with a forced cheerfulness through which bled his usual <em>why me God <em>melancholia.

This melancholia was as pervasive as the blackness of the outer space that threatened to swallow the brightness of the Milky Way.

But he was trying desperately to serve as a counterbalance to Sherlock, who was as grouchy as a comet denied entry into planetary orbit and kicking a tin can with every step as they aimlessly walked down the deserted, foreign dirt road.

Which road, incidentally, was as rocky and cold and desolate as the exiled planet, Pluto.

"Don't even know if we're going _towards _Grimpen Village or _away _from it," Sherlock growled, and it was clear from his irrationally high level of anger that the airborne chemicals to which they'd been exposed multiple times in the past few days still weren't letting his poor body alone. Excretion or no excretion.

Or maybe the problem was that he was experiencing extended withdrawal symptoms because of his past abuse. John wasn't sure how recently Sherlock had been a user – probably more recently than he cared to imagine, considering Lestrade's drug bust only a year prior.

Ah, but then again, that was the problem with being a star - everyone wanted to find _the reason that it shined _without just accepting that perhaps the sole reason was an effort on the universe's part to try and make everyone's life-journeys a little brighter.

Because almost everyone wanted to be a star. But if that path to stardom involved something that was socially nonconformative, somehow that invalidated the star's legitimacy.

It was a lot easier to blot out a star than it was to make it change its color. And there were millions just like it, anyway, so what did it matter if that little irksome one was removed without a trace?

"Well, it's better to be on the road at all than to be wandering through the moor at night," John said, to which Sherlock just kicked the can into a knot of dense grass alongside the road and picked up his pace in an apparent attempt to get away from John's prattling.

He was reminded of the story of the constellation, Cancer, who, in an attempt to assassinate a hero, had hurtled into the sky when kicked by a distracted, disdainful Hercules who was battling the more dangerous many-headed Hydra at that moment.

"I heard a joke about camping, once," continued John as he trotted to keep up, "You mentioned that you've read Edgar Allen Poe."

"He wasn't exactly the most _jovial_ of writers." At which point, Sherlock's gloved hand moved up to flip his coat-collar, only to be frustrated in this because the collar was already turned, to which he groaned.

"Oh, no, the joke wasn't his, at least I don't think so," John went on, feeling for the moment like he imagined Molly Hooper must feel some days; trying to get a word in edgewise to Sherlock in a single-minded mood seemed to be the only occupation she had when he was around.

It was a wonder she'd fallen for the detective, particularly when there were so many girls who showed up dead on her table who'd passionately loved men who abused them.

It was a wonder that _John _had fallen for the detective when he could see this so plainly, too, but then again he was a soldier, so he told himself that he could handle quite a lot of abuse.

It seemed that he couldn't resist it, actually.

Feeling like a dog who would be forever destined to chase a cat who would be forever destined to be uncatchable, he realized, incidentally, that was just the case of Laelaps and the Teumessian Fox, otherwise known as the constellations Canis Major and Canis Minor, respectively.

"It's about his detective, Auguste Dupin."

"What about him?"

Sherlock's seriousness almost made John forget that he was attempting, in very poor form, to tell a joke, so to prevent this from continuing to happen, John let the rest of the narrative gush out haphazardly.

"Well, as I heard it, Auguste Dupin and his friend – whose name I forget, incidentally – were going camping, and they pitched their tent under the stars and went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, Auguste Dupin woke his friend up and said: 'My friend, look up at the stars, and tell me what you see.' And his friend replied: 'I see millions and millions of stars.' Dupin said: 'And what do you deduce from that?'"

"Dupin is supposed to have said 'deduce'?" asked Sherlock, a bit affronted, but listening.

John awkwardly backtracked. "I don't actually suppose that he would really say the word 'deduce' since I don't think anyone has ever used the word like you do, Sherlock."

"I should think not. I like to think of it as a personal quirk."

Indeed, Sherlock's mastery of deduction was as iconic as Neptune's double-headed trident, and just as empirical as the discovery of the god's namesake planet.

John blustered a bit nonsensically for a moment before continuing, "_Anyhow,_ so Dupin's friend said, 'Well, if there are millions of stars, and if even a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth out there. And if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life.' And Auguste Dupin said: 'My friend, what a brilliant but dull-minded conclusion.' And Dupin's friend asked, 'Why's that?' to which Dupin replied, coolly, 'It means that somebody stole our tent.'"

This made Sherlock stop in his tracks, and John stumbled in his attempt to follow his friend's movements.

"What?" asked John, noticing a self-satisfied smirk rising on Sherlock's face that decidedly _hadn't _been there a moment prior.

"John, I've been remarkably stupid. Here. Do you have a light?"

With that, he sank down onto his knees in the damp dirt and began to scratch a series of circles and lines.

John got his cell phone out of his pocket - useless in all other respects since, as they'd tried several times before, no service was to be found in the area - and pressed a button so that it lit up.

"Turn up the backlight," commanded Sherlock, "and hold it."

"My charger's...it's almost..." John began, but as Sherlock furiously continued etching in the ground with his fingernails, he just shrugged and said, "You have five minutes, max, before the battery dies."

The light from the cell phone was as blue and ice-cold as that from Uranus overhead, but just a trifle more sufficient than the planet's rays.

"That's enough," said Sherlock without further comment, "Now shut up."

He was closing his eyes between the sketch-motions as he drew, and John realized, as he leaned and looked onto the drawing, that he was trying to recreate their movements from the past half-day.

Finally, there was a point at which Sherlock seemed to be drawing a blank, and he opened his eyes and looked at John.

"Do you remember, John, which way we took from the bed and breakfast – was it southeast or southwest?"

"I haven't the foggiest," said John, too quickly because suddenly he realized, "Oh. Well, we were heading towards the sun, so that would have been-"

"-Thank _you_," said Sherlock triumphantly, etching a last line and standing up with a sense of pride. "If I'd been with Hansel and Gretel..."

"Let's not get carried away," said John, examining the scratchings and thinking with awe upon Sherlock's ability to focus with such precision in his quests.

It was just as epic to witness him in his pursuit of the truth as it must have been for the Greek gods to watch Jason and the Argonauts pursuing the Golden Fleece so single-mindedly in their great and beautiful ship, a ship that became the enormous tri-part constellation Argo Narvis.

"So, at which end are we now?" John asked, squatting to read the crude but distinctly clear map.

"Here." Sherlock made the mark more clear with the toe of his shoe. "And _this _is the road we're on now. Now all we have to do," he said, sinking onto the ground again, "is sit and wait for the moon to show us which direction is east and which direction is west."

"You didn't notice before?" asked John wonderingly.

"No, if you recall we've been wandering in densely wooded area surrounded by hills."

Well, it may have been densely wooded, but _John _had noticed that the moon was sinking on their right-hand side, and had known this for some time.

It wasn't because he had eyes that gave meaning to the constellation Lynx, like Sherlock did.

He justknew how _important_ it was to know where one was at all times – his army training taught him to be constantly aware of the polar directions.

That was one of the great things about his time in the army - what he'd learned there gave him a stabilizing, Saturnian presence of mind, like rings around his middle, that balanced him at times of need.

"So," he said, chewing over the idea of telling Sherlock he knew which way they should go.

But then he couldn't help but think of the many times that Sherlock had argued _passionately _against the importance of knowing the first thing about the solar system. Against, John presumed, even the practical notion of _noticing _the position of the moon and stars at any given moment.

But he did notice Sherlock's current silence on the matter of _knowing the planets' movements_ and decided that this silence was as close to admitting to having been _wrong _as Sherlock would get without being pressed.

John realized that if he pressed the matter, it would be the second time today Sherlock would have to admit that he was _wrong_.

And what better comeuppance for deliberately poisoning someone that one claimed to be a _friend _of than to slowly draw out two such major confessions of failure in one day?

Friends were supposed to protect each other, like Jupiter of the night sky protected people who came under its influence.

He did momentarily consider the degradation of Sherlock's mood since their first such moment over the sachets of ketchup and brown sauce that morning, and knew the wiser choice was to wait at least until they made it back to Grimpen Village, or wherever it was they'd pass the night.

But Sherlock's clear narrow-mindedness and egotism seemed to make the choice on his behalf – instead of asking John for any ideas or even just for an opinion, Sherlock sat himself down on the side of the road, facing the moon, prepared to wait for the moon to make its movement pattern clear.

"_So_, in a quarter of an hour we'll know exactly which way to go," said Sherlock over-confidentially, wrapping his coat tightly around him and puffing against the cold. "God, what I'd give for a cigarette right now."

It was because of this disregard that John decided to move the conversation to a direction that served to make his point.

It was a dangerous maneuver, perhaps as life-threatening as trying to navigate a space-ship through the craggy asteroid belt.

"I guess the movement of the planets is a rather _useful_ thing to notice," said John ambiguously, joining Sherlock in sitting down on the damp road. His legs were aching.

"Only in regards to navigation, or a crime relating to astronomy or astrology," Sherlock replied briskly, pressing his hands together and rubbing them for the warming effect of friction.

"I believe your _exact _words on the subject, last we talked of it, were something akin to _If we went around the moon or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn't make any difference!_"

There was the bitterness of Mars, God of War, in remembering this conversation, for John, because Sherlock had dismissed so _much _of what John felt was important, not just the blog, which John would grant any day was silly, but fundamental things that were cornerstones of daily life.

Like, _the solar system_. That was important to John, not for any describable or reasonable reason.

Perhaps it was only important to _him_ because Sherlock considered it so _unimportant._

"And then I said something pathetic and hateful and rude; do you want me to apologize for that, is that it?" asked Sherlock with some impatience that, perhaps, was masking insecurity.

"No, I'm not looking for an _apology_," said John, surprised that Sherlock would describe anything he'd ever said as _pathetic _or _hateful _or _rude_ or anything aside from _clever_, but then again perhaps the many _clues _that the universe had been giving the great detective of late were finally being processed.

Still, John wouldn't let himself get distracted from the main point, and he tethered himself to it as fervently as an astronaut Odysseus might tie himself to the Earth as wailing constellations of sirens floated past.

"I'm not looking for an apology at all," John continued, wishing he had a mariner's compass (aside from the practically useless constellation Pyxis above) to aid him in navigating these dangerous waters.

He took a deep breath. "Just wanting you to admit that sometimes the things that silly people put in their heads do turn out useful after all."

"Look, John: I remembered the theory – I remembered how to apply the theory – isn't that enough of an admission?"

"What theory?" asked John, "You mean concerning the earth going around the sun?"

The glare that accompanied the "Yes, of _course _I meant _that theory_" snarl was so juvenile, it was priceless.

"All right, I don't think most people would call that a _theory_, but I'll grant you this, you _did _remember it, Sherlock."

"How could I delete the information after arguing about it _twice?_" Sherlock demanded, looking so put-upon to remember this information that he still obviously considered superfluous that it was almost unbearable for John to not laugh.

"You don't mean you _seriously _wouldn't have known that without me telling you."

"Who knows!" Sherlock threw his hands in the air as if begging to be beamed up by a compassionate Scotty, or, more likely, by someone who came from a smarter planet.

_Interesting that he didn't think to delete the whole two arguments that he obviously remembered so well, _John thought, and he wondered vaguely what might have made them non-delete-worthy, if Sherlock was really as good as he said he was about deleting the unnecessary trivialities that accompanied daily life experiences_. _

Maybe, John dared to hopelessly hope, it had something to do with some secret appreciation of John as _more_ than a friend - some secret appreciation that would come to bear fruit that would ripen in an atmosphere ruled by a bright and brilliant Venus.

Sherlock then gave a frustrated sigh. "Why the hell can't the bloody thing _move on _already?"

"So, it seems that I taught you something?" John asked, because that's what the crux of the matter seemed to be.

"_Yes_, if you _must _put it that way," said Sherlock in a hiss, staring at the moon with such intensity that he might just have been attempting to _will _it to move.

"I will, then," said John with more self-satisfaction than was perhaps warranted. "Would you like to learn more things that may or may not be useful?"

Sherlock just gritted his teeth and looked peeved, as if he'd been told childishly that he was about to turn into a flying fish akin to the constellation Volans, visible overhead.

"If you don't say something, I'm going to just go ahead and tell you all I know about the stars and the night sky."

Sherlock rolled his eyes and sighed, but said nothing, which John took as a small victory for the cause of humility.

"Well," John said, thinking back, "I know the new moon was about two weeks ago, now, so what we're seeing at the moment is a waxing moon, probably it'll be full in five or six days."

Sherlock's returning grunt was far from encouraging, but he wasn't dismissing John yet, so the doctor continued.

"So just ahead of us, almost, a little to the east, is The Plough, and just below it, Ursa Major, and just above it, Ursa Minor. Do you see?"

"Where?"

Sherlock was reluctantly looking up, and John pointed. "Well, The Plough's easiest to see. It looks like a scythe or something, turned on its side, or...well, a plough. I think some people call it a drinking gourd or dipper."

"It's like connect-the-dots with a painting by Pollock. It requires the imagination of a child to see anything in the stars," said Sherlock scornfully.

But at least he seemed interested enough that he was paying attention, though his attention was far from encouraging of John's efforts. "In trying to see things that aren't really there, people are liable to forget what it actually is that they _are _seeing."

"It's not just me," said John, wondering what Sherlock's implication was, but not too much because he was taking some amount of pride in being the didactic one for once. "This is ancient stuff, Sherlock."

"All the more reason that we should forget it and not let it bias our current perspective. _That _is scientific stuff, John. How many researchers seek only to validate the work of their predecessors, blindly and passionately and without any attention to rigor or method?"

"I see it differently," said John, "what's the point of reinventing the wheel when you can advance so much farther once you already know about the basic form and function of a wheel?"

"That's _different_," said Sherlock grumpily. "Reinterpreting old data is very different from seeking out new data."

"But how can you seek out new data if you don't have a grasp of the data that's already been found?" asked John, feeling like he was arguing with a child at this point.

"You read the research journals and _figure it out,_" replied Sherlock, getting tired of the argument too and standing up with great huffiness.

"I..."

John had forgotten where the metaphor had started and was not longer sure where he wanted it to end.

"You've lost track of the point you were trying to make. I win," said Sherlock very astutely, turning on his heel in the direction from which they'd come.

"What? Where are you going?" asked John, rising, shaking out the foot that had been falling asleep, and chasing after Sherlock, who was striding at a doubled pace.

"Grimpen Village, of course."

This necessitated a _what? Did the moon finally cooperate with you? _comment from John, but they were now running into the darkness, and what with John's racing heartbeat and pounding lungs as he tried to keep time with Sherlock Holmes' gait, he couldn't squeak it out.

There was no need, however.

"Don't...try to be clever, John. It...it doesn't suit you," said Sherlock as they hurtled through the darkness. "I knew...from your syntax...that you knew our orientation...and sure enough you...you revealed yourself when you mentioned...the position of The Plough."

John's memory revisited that part of the conversation.

_...just ahead of us, almost, a little to the east, is The Plough..._

"Oh!" he gasped, though he hadn't meant to gasp it, "You're too clever. By half."

Sherlock didn't reply, but as the moonlight cast a beam through the trees a moment later, John saw the glistening of a self-satisfied smirk on his friend's face.

"Don't forget...it's _your _fault we're out here in the first place," said John unnecessarily, "you with your...witty melodramatic comments...about seeing a man about a dog...which we never got around to anyway..."

"Oh, do shut up, John, you can't keep up if you're complaining so much," noted Sherlock, his voice a little warmer now that they weren't lost and now apparently able to look a little more on the bright side of life.

"Oh, you git," muttered John, just to be contrary, to which Sherlock responded with a bark of laughter and a spirited effort to pick up his pace.

Which meant that the only reasonable thing for John to do was stop and catch his breath and wait for Sherlock to do the same some steps ahead of him.

After all, it wasn't as if either of them had the indefatigable feet of Mercury.


End file.
